Just
before the resumption of airings with installment 7 of season 3, i.e.
following your “pod” of 6 episodes and then some months to ponder,
seemed like a good time for me to shoot in some analysis and take
credit before any in your multitudes of participating correspondents
scooped me on deductions. We weren't scheduled for a chance to catch
our breath after this until the summer break.

The
Losties have been kicked out of Eden, the disappearance of station Swan
having been accomplished by one of these means:

the
blowing of explosive charges pre-placed under a false bottom,
dropping the remainder into that space, and putting some dirt on top;

same
as #1, but using an elevator to gently lower it instead of
explosives; or, most humorously,...

David
Copperfield style — the facility is still there, a new lid having
been placed on the hatch and covered with debris as before, and
geographic cues being disturbed so as to lead the Losties to someplace
other than where the hatch actually was, a previously undiscovered
hole having been at this location since before the Losties arrived.

We
haven't been shown any attempt to access the main entrance of Swan
since its “destruction”. Presumably the Losties would just find a
blocked passageway within. Meanwhile Locke, Desmond, and Mr. Eko were
removed unconscious by the same means and in the same style used to
place them after the “crash” of 815 and the wreck of the Elizabeth, but
this time with the absurdist feature of
Desmond's clothes having been removed. Partly that detail was art for
art's sake, but it also symbolized rebirth and was part of the general
ramping up of things for both us and the Losties to see if they/we
figure it out.

The
sky was “turned purple” not optically but Persinger
style, by EM broadcast directly into the brains of everyone around.
That had the side effect of interfering with other electronics, as
complained by one character, “...our comms
have been down.”

Since
my last entry I've been trying to figure who is aligned with which
faction, but the picture is still very fuzzy. Three readings of Illuminatus! never answered the corresponding
question there for me, and I had the impression there that trying to
solve that was not even in the spirit of that novel, but I have the
sense that Lost is different — that although you do intend a
resemblance to Illuminatus!, you give the audience a chance to
arrive at a sensible division of motivations that will turn out to
reflect the underlying plot, as opposed to the indomitable playfulness
of Illuminatus! and its characters. In this feature Lost
more closely resembles Masks of the Illuminati by RAW, who died
between my last entry and this.

I
still have no conclusions about the provenance and purpose of the
orientation films and their alteration. It's as if Illuminatus!,
which already reads as if the manuscript pages had been shuffled and
reassembled, were shuffled yet again, and The Midget had re-edited the
movie When Atlantis Ruled the Earth. But I can commit to two
things. The first is that you guys either fucked up royally in
allowing Locke to have Pearl orientation video cassette (#5) in the
vicinity of magnetically flying forks and laundry machines and not have
it erased, or Locke received a new copy while he was unconscious.
(Apparently you really did fuck up in the case of Jason
McCormick-Alter-McCormick, retconning the name
to unalter the Alter/Alder/Elder alteration
on the DVD. Did they scratch off that piece of your Emmy for that, or
is that where þþþþ chewed it?)

The
other conclusion is that the subtleties of the two Mars were
specifically laid out for us — the real world audience and participants
in Get Lost. The Losties can no longer make a side-by-side
comparison between the Swan film (#3), which has been removed from
their access, and the videotape. It would not be reasonable “now”
(i.e. latest-shown Craphole time) for any
character who's seen both movies to recall subtleties about the
apparent splices and appearance of the presenter, and remark thereon.
So they could only be clues for us.

However,
one character who may have picked up a clue therein was Mr. Eko. He
and Locke were “called” to Pearl, they both viewed the video, and
apparently came to opposite conclusions. I think that's when Eko's
fate was sealed. (If not then, then surely when he tried to prevent
Locke and Desmond from letting the timer run out.) Locke did what he
was then “supposed” to do, but Eko revealed by his actions that he knew
too much. It was the fruition of my judgement
in entry #4 that Eko would be a likely character to figure things out
and therefore have to be terminated. (Sayid you probably have to keep
around as the “voice of truth”.) The bear was supposed to have killed
him, but when that didn't work he had to be
recalled to Pearl for Smokey to finish him off. His brother's iron
cross appeared to have still been in his hand, so it must've been some
other piece of ferrous metal on his waist (Something in his pocket?
Belt buckle?) that Smokey grabbed Eko by. I have no guess as to what
the story was with the missing body, but I'll take a stab at the
arsonist of his hut: Charlie. If he could be commanded to set a fire
earlier, why not again? (Not that we actually saw him do it even then.)

Other
than that, our most recent visit to Pearl seemed primarily to be to
clue us in to the bathroom (in which someone could've hidden during
Locke & Eko's first visit — it's practically a cliche
of murder mysteries) and the Hathaway Shirt Man. For all I know, Eko's
last words to Locke might've been, “Get your knee off my chest.”

I'm
making the most paranoid assumption about Locke's & Sawyer's most
recent flashbacks: that the events in them were orchestrated from end to
end, Truman style. Thematic hints about the big story. Same as
the phony acts between Benry and your own Stella Maris, Juliet. Ditto
the boy's aiding Sawyer's “escape” from his cage. Another thematic
hint about the big story was Sawyer's being shown where he was from the
hill; it reminds the viewers that any time a character is unconscious,
s/he can be taken anywhere. Similarly the story of Sawyer's “surgery”
was to broach the idea of body implants to the audience, and to show
viewers that ostensible surgery doesn't have to do what the patient is
told. As if that weren't enough, you gave us another example when Jack
showed that surgical access to a kidney and to the spinal cord can be
thru the same incision. Too bad Locke didn't get to see it.

But
the big question of the 3rd season opening pod is what role Benry et al. play in the plot. I've been wrestling with
whether they're supposed to be deprogrammers
of the Losties, the Island Powers being the programmers. Benry has
considerable artistic resemblance to Hagbard Celine of Illuminatus!,
down to having a submarine at his disposal. I take it the submarine
was used to sneak up on Sun on the docked Elizabeth, and to tow the
seaborne Elizabeth eastward while Desmond slept in it. Benry seems to
be trying to tell at least some of the Losties to beware of fakery. Locke, this place is a joke; I did nothing
and the timer reset itself. Sawyer, look at how you can be manipulated
with the help of a rabbit, the magician's classic prop. (And see that
even someone who throws literary allusions around can be caught off
guard when the shoe is on the other foot; what's the matter, don't you
read?) (Meanwhile you vie with Smallville
for Wizard of Oz allusions as he helps Losties find their
“missing organs” by putting them thru tribulations. Sayid passed his
test by digging up Henry Gale's grave. Let's see...Benry's Hagbard
Celine, he's Henry Gale and the Wizard, and he's John Galt...so
who “is” he in Watchmen? And he knows his Stephen King while
alternately pretending to like & dislike that stuff.)

Yet
at the same time, we have an unbroken chain that leads from Claire's
remark in the lawyer's office, to the musical mobile's
playing her song in the medical station, to Ethan's taking her and
taking charge of her in the medical station, that shows Ethan Rom
deliberately furthering the Island Powers' plot. And Ethan would appear
inextricably tied to Benry by the instructions he gave him and Goodwin
in the opening minutes of season 1. This looks like part of the
programming, not deprogramming.

But
if the residents of Levitationtown (Othersville) were in on the
deception, what is to be made of the aerial display, the earthquake, and
their reactions to it? We know none of the Losties were on that
airliner at the time it was shown being destroyed in mid-air, and we
know the show could not have been for the Losties on the ground
(although conceivably Tailies in the water may have gotten to see some
of it during the “Corona beer commercial”).

One
thought I had to explain the reaction of Benry et al. put the emphasis
on the underlined word in Benry's statement to Ethan, “There may actually
be survivors; you're on of them.” Meaning, “We know that's just a show,
but they put (or may have put) some real people on the plane, some of
whom may have survived by mistake. Ethan, pretend to be one of them;
the shills among the Losties will assume you are.” After a few days of
consideration, I rejected that interpretation.

Therefore
I fall back on my previous conclusion: Some, but not all, of the
residents of Levitationtown are in on the deception, just as some but of
course not all of the Losties are. Benry is “in”, and I'm pretty sure
so were Juliet, Ethan, Goodwin, the boy in the cage across from Sawyer,
and Alex. Some other major associates I'm not sure of.

The
earthquake which was supposed to coincide with the “system failure” had
curiously localized effects, which I conclude were produced by the
buried type of earthquake simulators used to test buildings for
resistance to real earthquakes. Wasn't it Bernard who built the
outdoor pantry near the beach? He knew where to put it so it'd be
shaken and have things fall off the shelves. Meanwhile, our friend
Alley (a friend of the late Elliot þþþþ , whom you may have met at Cedar
Tavern) made the excellent observation that Ethan, who was
conspicuously placed in what would appear to be a vulnerable position
when the ground started to shake — on his back with his head under a
house — did not move from it until after it stopped, at which time he
easily slid out from under, which means he knew it wasn't a real
earthquake. Then Benry came out and conspicuously started looking up,
knowing that those who were not clued in would react by looking up as
well, providing plenty of witnesses for the “wreck of 815”.

For
a while I also took seriously the possibility that Levitationtown was
in the Pacific, and that the “air show” was to provide witnesses for the
world of Oceanic 815's destruction, which would be blamed on the Iraqi,
thus obviating the scenario in which 815 lands a little late at LAX.
It has been widely remarked that the timing of Goodwin's arrival among
the Tailies does not fit the “hour” Benry allowed for. So why couldn't
Benry's associates pretend to just go over the rim of the caldera, then
hop transport halfway around the world to Equatorial Guinea? And then
it would be easy to distinguish those in the know; they'd show up on Poo and the other nearby island (labeled “Abu Grab” by John), and the rest be left behind in
the Pacific. But I now see no serious attraction to this scenario, and
think Levitationtown is in one of the southern calderas of Bioko.

Therefore
Benry's instructions to Ethan and Goodwin were part of the show for
those around them. Ethan and Goodwin would've already known what they
were doing. But then what's to be made of the lists they were told to
prepare in 3 days? And what relationship does this have to the pre-existing list of persons Tom mentioned Jack as
not having been on? I'm still trying to piece together the relative
positions of agents' knowledge in view of the two ostensible kidnapping
raids and the troop of barefooted persons. And how was Nathan placed
among the Tailies? A clue was given during the deathlocked
exchange between Goodwin and Ana Lucia. Goodwin evinced the influence
of doctrine, which I'm taking to have been sincere on his part, and
would be just the sort of thing someone in a position of superior
knowledge would probably not have; that's for the suckers lower
down in the conspiracy.

Desmond's
apparently involuntary “call” of what Locke was going to say later I
think was a result of his having intercepted a “psychic” (wireless
direct-to-brain) message to Locke telling him what to do and say. As
in season 2 when Locke experienced what should've
been Eko's dream, we see that the method of transmission is not
sufficiently directional to prevent this sort of cross-talk. I still
think Locke has an implant, at least for induction of paraplegia, but
maybe it's not used to receive voice after all.

Adam,
the critic in the book club, self-referentially corresponds to Epicene Wildeblood in Illuminatus!. Ms.
O'Rourke, who posts as tdciago in alt.tv.lost, continues to plumb the mythologic connections of Lost so deeply as
to make my efforts therein superfluous.

And now another swing at the grand plot. A
great many mysteries of Lost could be explained by teleportation of persons and goods. Someone at the
Fuselage compiled quite a list of them. Therefore that looks like the
sort of thing that could be the great hoax Lost is leading to.
That is, someone's purpose would be served by fooling a bunch of people
into thinking teleportation had been invented. What purpose, I still
don't know, but it might somehow involve the defamation of the Hanso
Foundation.

Best
Wishes,

The
following was received the same day along with Iran war plans. John's
also the one who came up with the name “Levitationtown”.

A Page Out of Time

by
John

Rousseau and Alex are in a secret
alliance. It becamse barely visible in Claire's release from Caduceus.
It will again become visible when some 815 personnel escape from
“Alcatraz” (Abu Grab).

“Cyclops” is an opponent of the
Others. It was his glass eye that Libby found at Arrow.

Ana knew Christian was Jack's
father. She declined to tell him. She was supposed to lure Jack to a
tail seat. This plan failed and the two doctors ended up in the wrong
seats. Each got special treatment on “landing”.

“The plance crash was fake”
implied Rousseau to Said. When planes in flight crash they leave very
few survivors. In the beginning of Episode Seven, Season two the water
splashing scene shows an upside down view of the island. This could
only occur if a passenger were lowered into the water, lifted, and
finally dropped. Ben gave Goodwin one hour to get to tail beach. Ana
spotted him ten minutes after the “crash”. What happened to the
missing fifty minutes?

The Others and the body disposal
unit have a poor info exchange. Ten minutes after the “crash”, front
section Charlie is at center section crash site. Higher than usual?
That is why Cindy had to disappear.